Bergen County prosecutor considers retrying Palisades murder case

By PETER J. SAMPSON

staff writer |

The Record

Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli said Wednesday his office will retry Stephen Scharf for murder if it does not appeal a court decision this week that overturned the man’s 2011 conviction for killing his wife by pushing her off the Palisades.

file/ chris pedota / staff photographer

Stephen Scharf interviewed in Trenton State Prison in 2013.

“We are assessing whether to make application for appeal to the Supreme Court,” Molinelli said in a written statement. "At the least we will retry the case."

Scharf was convicted in 2011 and sentenced to |the maximum term — life with no parole eligibility for 30 years. It was a celebrated cold case reopened and pursued by Molinelli’s office. The high-profile jury trial featured Dr. Michael Baden — perhaps best known as a defense witness for O.J. Simpson — as a |key prosecution witness.

But the appeals court ruled that hearsay testimony from a counselor and friends of Scharf’s wife, Jody Ann, should not have been allowed. They had testified that Jody Ann told them about her fears that her husband would kill her.

The error of admitting the hearsay testimony was “of such a nature as to have been clearly capable of producing an unjust result,” the appeals court said.

And the prosecution’s evidence, the court said, “was by no means overwhelming.”

Molinelli said Wednesday that he can proceed with a new trial without using the testimony cited in the appeal. Suppressing those statements “will not preclude a prosecution,” he said.

Scharf, who remained in prison in Trenton on Wednesday awaiting a transfer to Bergen County, has always maintained that his wife’s death was an accident.

On the evening of Sept. 20, 1992, Scharf emerged from a wooded area near the Rockefeller Lookout on the Palisades Interstate Parkway and flagged down a driver. His wife had just fallen off the cliff, he told the driver, and he asked him to get help.

Rescue workers arrived, and after searching in the dark for hours, they found Jody Ann Scharf’s body at the base of the cliff. She had suffered massive head and chest injuries in the fall.

Scharf told police that he and his wife were hugging and kissing on a flat rock at the edge of the cliff when she accidentally slipped and fell.

Two weeks before her death, Jody Scharf had filed for divorce.

More than a decade after his wife’s death, Scharf, of Washington Township, received $730,000 in life insurance from his wife’s policy. He remarried before his conviction and had a daughter with his second wife, Tina, he said in a prison interview in 2013.

Bergen County prosecutor considers retrying Palisades murder case

Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli said Wednesday his office will retry Stephen Scharf for murder if it does not appeal a court decision this week that overturned the man’s 2011 conviction for killing his wife by pushing her off the Palisades.

“We are assessing whether to make application for appeal to the Supreme Court,” Molinelli said in a written statement. "At the least we will retry the case."

Scharf was convicted in 2011 and sentenced to |the maximum term — life with no parole eligibility for 30 years. It was a celebrated cold case reopened and pursued by Molinelli’s office. The high-profile jury trial featured Dr. Michael Baden — perhaps best known as a defense witness for O.J. Simpson — as a |key prosecution witness.

But the appeals court ruled that hearsay testimony from a counselor and friends of Scharf’s wife, Jody Ann, should not have been allowed. They had testified that Jody Ann told them about her fears that her husband would kill her.

The error of admitting the hearsay testimony was “of such a nature as to have been clearly capable of producing an unjust result,” the appeals court said.

And the prosecution’s evidence, the court said, “was by no means overwhelming.”

Molinelli said Wednesday that he can proceed with a new trial without using the testimony cited in the appeal. Suppressing those statements “will not preclude a prosecution,” he said.

Scharf, who remained in prison in Trenton on Wednesday awaiting a transfer to Bergen County, has always maintained that his wife’s death was an accident.

On the evening of Sept. 20, 1992, Scharf emerged from a wooded area near the Rockefeller Lookout on the Palisades Interstate Parkway and flagged down a driver. His wife had just fallen off the cliff, he told the driver, and he asked him to get help.

Rescue workers arrived, and after searching in the dark for hours, they found Jody Ann Scharf’s body at the base of the cliff. She had suffered massive head and chest injuries in the fall.

Scharf told police that he and his wife were hugging and kissing on a flat rock at the edge of the cliff when she accidentally slipped and fell.

Two weeks before her death, Jody Scharf had filed for divorce.

More than a decade after his wife’s death, Scharf, of Washington Township, received $730,000 in life insurance from his wife’s policy. He remarried before his conviction and had a daughter with his second wife, Tina, he said in a prison interview in 2013.